Employee Law Practice Areas

What are ERISA and Employee Benefit Claims?

Employee benefit claims can take many forms and can be raised by current or former participants, or their beneficiaries.

In the United States, employees, former employees, and beneficiaries, are protected from denial of employer-provided disability, medical, retirement and other benefit claims by ERISA under federal law in the private sector, and under state law for public or other types of ERISA-exempted benefit plans. These claims arise during employment, while disabled, in the termination of employment, when retired, and for the estates of the deceased.

Employees may bring ERISA and employee benefit claims based on: providing written or oral communications about employee benefits during any time of employment; in denying disability, medical, retirement or other benefit claims; and during termination, divorce, retirement, or disciplinary action.

ERISA and Employee Benefits Understood

ERISA and employee benefits claims are sometimes straightforward and sometimes not so easy to spot. On the easier side, if you are wrongfully denied covered disability, medical, retirement, or other benefits, you may be able to recover the cost of those denied claims. Additionally, without access to your employee benefit plan, its summary plan description (SPD), or other plan documents, you might not understand that not only have you been denied rightful benefits, but also the administrators and managers of your plan may be breaching the fiduciary duties of acting in your best interest and acting as a reasonable fiduciary should do under similar circumstances. Fiduciary status means that plan administrators and others are held to the highest standards of care known to law. Only a review of your plan documents by a trained and experienced employee benefit attorney can discover whether you have such claims. In such claims, the burden is on the employee or other covered person to prove that a benefit-related decision wrongfully denied them an employee benefit or that there was a breach of a fiduciary duty of loyalty or care owed to them.

These cases are very complex and require legal advice from only those who concentrate on ERISA or employee benefits law. If you believe a violation of your employee benefit rights may have occurred, contact Wisconsin’s only employee-focused ERISA and employee benefit lawyers, Walcheske & Luzi, LLC.

The Walcheske & Luzi Difference

At Walcheske & Luzi, LLC it is our pledge to provide open and honest advice, taking the time to listen, counsel, and advise. We have been characterized by many as a different kind of law firm, providing a certain type of personalized service, attention to detail, and honesty to its clients that other firms either can’t, don’t, or won’t provide.

The materials appearing in this website and on our blog are for general informational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship and may not always reflect the most current legal developments. For additional information about our firm, please contact us at 1-262-780-1953 or contact@walcheskeluzi.com